Writing table
Category
Furniture
Date
circa 1700
Materials
Deal, walnut, turtleshell, brass
Measurements
78.2 x 119.5 x 73.5 cm
Place of origin
France
Order this imageCollection
Saltram, Devon
NT 871299
Summary
A turtleshell-veneered and brass-inlaid writing table, a so-called bureau Mazarin, French, late 17th/early 18th century. The rectangular top inlaid with brass in a pattern of arabesques and foliated scrolls around a central cartouche and above a central convex-fronted frieze drawer above a recessed cupboard door. Flanked to either side by a bank of three short drawers each raised on four tapering square-section legs. Each group of four legs joined by curving, flat, rectangular-section stretchers, and raised on knop brass feet. The reverse polished and with brass line inlay simulating panels.
Provenance
Date of introduction to Saltram not recorded but at Saltram in 1951 and accepted by HM Treasury in lieu of full payment of Death Duties from the executors of Edmund Robert Parker (1877 - 1951), 4th Earl of Morley and transferred to the National Trust in 1957.